1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates, generally, to methods for cleaning animal carcasses. More particularly, it relates to apparatus and methods for cleaning the neck area of an animal carcass.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the use of brushes in animal carcass cleaning plants for many years because the brushes could become contaminated by one product and therefore other products moving through a cleaning station could become cross-contaminated. The present inventors discovered that the original contamination was possible because multiple bristles, each of which has a substantially circular transverse cross-section, were collectively bundled for mounting in circular blind bores formed in brush heads, enabling bacteria to thrive in the interstitial spaces between the bristles. The present inventors solved the contamination problem by reducing the size of each blind bore and mounting a single bristle in each blind bore, thereby eliminating the interstitial spaces and eliminating the bacterial breeding ground. The FDA then lifted the ban and rotating brushes are now allowed to be used in carcass cleaning procedures.
During the ban, carcass cleaning companies relied on oscillating high pressure water jets to perform the cleaning. With the advent of the bacteria-free brushes, most of these companies simply added the new, improved brushes to their cleaning stations without giving much thought as to the proper placement of the brushes, the optimal orientation of the brushes, the length of the individual bristles that collectively form a brush, how the water spray pattern should be adjusted to work with brushes, and so on.
Cleaning the neck area of a carcass is problematic. The known methods include spraying the neck area with high pressure water, usually with nozzles that oscillate back and forth.
Attempts have been made to improve the cleaning action of the water by increasing its pressure. However, the extra pressure can inhibit the oscillation of the nozzles so what is gained in pressure is lost in coverage.
Cleaning with water alone, or brushes alone, however, does not guarantee a clean product. The placement of the brushes, their direction of rotation, the length of their bristles, how the brushes are used in conjunction with spray nozzles, and so on cooperate to produce a clean product.
Thus there is a need for a neck cleaning method and apparatus that uses both brushes and water sprays in an optimal way.
More particularly, there is a need for methods that teach an optimal placement and orientation of brushes and water sprays relative to one another.
There is a need as well for an apparatus that incorporates brushes having bristles that perform more effectively than conventional bristles.
However, in view of the prior art taken as a whole at the time the present invention was made, it was not obvious to those of ordinary skill how the identified needs could be fulfilled.